Although inmates around the world routinely kill themselves by hanging, there were certainly a number of reasons to believe that Aliyev was helped along in his death by others.
Aliyev was also set to testify at a future date against the two inmates who had beaten him. Some believe that one or both of the inmates may have found a way to get to Aliyev and made his death look like a suicide.
It is not uncommon for inmates to pay off guards to look the other way while they conduct nefarious activities. But then again, it seems like a lot of trouble to go through to get out of a relatively minor assault charge, which leaves the most obvious culprits—President Nazarbayev and the Kazakhstan government.
Aliyev’s lawyer, Klaus Ainedter, claims that he spoke with Rakhat the night before his death and that he showed no signs of suicidal behavior.
“I have significant doubts about this, without wanting to blame anyone. I visited him yesterday. There could be no talk whatsoever of danger or suicide,” said Ainedter.
But not everyone involved with the case believes that Ailyev’s death was suspicious. “For us, it was clearly suicide,” said Peter Prechtl the prison’s warden.
The truth behind the death of Rakhat Aliyev will probably never be known, although new details of his life paint the picture of a troubled and dangerous man. Aliyev was accused in the mid-1990s of kidnapping a Russian television executive and he was investigated by the FBI for a 2006 murder.
Whether Rakhat Aliyev’s death was the result of a complex conspiracy, angry prison inmates, or at his own hands, he is a testament to the often used aphorism, “violence begets violence.”
Chapter 2: The Murder of Meredith Kercher
Many people look back on their college years as the best of their lives. It is a time when we transition from children into adults and are given the freedoms that we dreamed of for most of our adolescence.
College is also a time when many sow their wild oats, while others prepare for their futures by volunteering.
Some young adults combine the two by studying abroad for a semester or more of their college experience. Most who study abroad see the experience as extremely positive because it allows them to finish their education while broadening their intellectual and cultural horizons.
But then there are the tragic cases.
A small percentage of Westerners who study abroad die. Many of the deaths of Western foreign students take place in Third World countries and most are the result of accidents and other unfortunate circumstances such as food poisoning or viral infections.
A very small number of Western students are murdered while studying abroad.
But it is the most tragic cases, when the student is murdered, which attract the most media attention. The brutal 2007 murder of British college student Meredith Kercher and the subsequent legal proceedings that were associated with it were replayed over and over by media outlets around the world. The case attracted so much attention due to a number of reasons.
First, the murder did not take place in a Third World country, but in the industrialized, Western nation of Italy. The setting of Italy also proved to provide ample fodder for the media when the lurid details of the lifestyles of those involved with the case were juxtaposed with the usually conservative nature of Italian society.
The nature of the Italian justice system was also a point of interest as the trials of those accused of Kercher’s murder never seemed to end.
Finally, the case tugged at the heartstrings of people around the world when they learned how brutally the attractive young student was murdered. The feelings of sympathy for the victim were contrasted with hatred and vitriol for the suspects, especially American Amanda Knox, who was often portrayed as a cold-blooded Jezebel by the international press.
Meredith Susan Cara Kercher (1985-2007)
In many ways Meredith Kercher was like most twenty-two year olds throughout the Western world. She grew up in a middle class family in the London area, England, with two older brothers and a sister. As the youngest child, Meredith’s parents spoiled her a bit, but her older siblings were always around to keep her out of trouble.
After high school, Kercher went on to college at Leeds University where she showed an interest in and aptitude for Italian culture and language. As she majored in Italian, Meredith, like most college students around the world, worked part-time at restaurants in order to cover her tuition and have a little spending money.
But Kercher believed that she had reached a wall with her studies at Leeds, so she transferred to the University of Perguia in Italy in the fall of 2007.
Meredith Kercher believed that the move would not only be an enjoyable experience, but would also prepare her for future employment.
When she arrived in Perguia, Kercher moved into an upstairs apartment of a home that she shared with two young Italian women and twenty-one-year-old American, Amanda Knox. Two young Italian men who were known to enjoy booze and drugs lived in the downstairs apartment.
Although Knox spent most of her free time with her boyfriend and Kercher had an extensive network of friends in Perugia, the two young women were friendly with each other and went out together from time to time. The other roommates of the women also later told investigators and reporters that there was no visible animosity between Kercher and Knox. Overall, the young women got along fine until the fateful night of November 1, 2007.
The Murder
The details of the events surrounding the last night of Meredith Kercher’s life remain murky because of conflicting court testimonies and inconclusive forensic evidence, but Italian police have been able to reconstruct a general timeline.
Early in the evening of November 1, Meredith went to the home of an English woman and had dinner with her and two other women. The group ate dinner and had a couple of drinks, but Meredith left the home on foot around 8:45 pm.
After this point, the chronology gets confusing because it is based on the testimonies of Kercher’s suspected killers.
According to the testimony of Amanda Knox, she returned to the apartment on the morning of November 2, 2007, after having spent the previous night at the home of her boyfriend, twenty-three-year-old University of Perugia student Raffaele Sollecito. Knox said that she noticed some drops of blood in the bathroom she shared with Kercher and that the door to Meredith’s bedroom was locked. She then left the apartment but returned later with Sollecito when they noticed from the outside that one of the windows in Kercher’s room was broken.
The pair then called the police.
In the meantime, Knox and Kercher’s roommate Filomena Romanelli returned home with a male friend who forced open the door to Kercher’s room.
They were shocked with what they found.
The lifeless body of Kercher was in a pool of blood covered by a blanket. An autopsy revealed that her death was no accident, nor a suicide. Kercher had been severely beaten, stabbed several times, and had her throat slit. She had also been raped.
The gruesome crime quickly made headlines in Italy and back in Kercher’s homeland of Britain.
The authorities in Perugia needed to catch Kercher’s killer, fast!
An Arrest is Made
In many ways Rudy Guede was the perfect suspect for Meredith Kercher’s murder. At the time of the murder, Guede was an unemployed twenty-year-old immigrant from the Ivory Coast who was well known to the local authorities for his involvement in drugs and criminal activity.
Guede was particularly known for burglaries.
His particular method of operation involved casing a spot out first and then returning later to burglarize it, usually with a knife or other type of weapon in hand. In fact, Guede was arrested just days prior to Kercher’s murder for the burglary of a business with a knife in his hand!
Since Guede was known to the local authorities and his MO seemed to match the murder, he was the first suspect to be brought in for questioning. The story that Guede gave to the police was full of many holes and just did not seem to gibe w
ith reality.
He claimed that on the night of the murder he and a friend were at a nightclub for most of the night. The alibi could only be partially verified. The police determined that Guede could have gone to the nightclub and had enough time to leave, kill Kercher, and then return to the club. Guede dug himself further into a legal hole when he admitted to knowing Kercher and spending time with her on the night previous to the murder at a nightclub. Witnesses who reported seeing Guede at the nightclub on October 31 only remember him spending time with a blonde—not a raven-haired woman like Kercher.
Guede also did not help his case when he left Italy for Germany the day after Kercher’s murder. He later claimed that he only did that out of desperation and that he was afraid that the murder would be pinned on him because he was black.
But forensic evidence never discriminates.
After interviewing Kercher’s neighbors, the authorities learned that Guede was acquainted with the men who shared the downstairs apartment, which meant that he surely had the opportunity to kill the young British woman.
Forensic experts discovered many different sets of fingerprints in Kercher’s apartment, some of which were proved to be Guede’s.
A shoe print next to some broken glass outside of Kercher’s apartment, as well as a bloody palm print next to her body, were also determined to belong to Guede. The final nail in Rudy Guede’s legal coffin came when the seminal fluid found inside Kercher was matched to him.
The case against Rudy Guede was air-tight and open and shut.
Guede was convicted of murder on October 29, 2008 and initially sentenced to thirty years in prison, which he later had reduced on appeal to sixteen years.
The conviction of Guede, though, was just the beginning of the legal saga.
Foxy Knoxy
In 2007, Amanda Knox was like many people in their early twenties. She experimented with drugs and alcohol and enjoyed social media.
Knox was known to brag about her exploits on social media, which she later claimed was greatly exaggerated, thereby earning herself a reputation and the nickname “Foxy Knoxy.” Whether Knox’s social media statements of her wild lifestyle were true or not may never be known, but in a number of posts she boasted of having multiple sexual partners, consuming large amounts of alcohol until puking and passing out, and smoking marijuana. She also seemed to like the nickname Foxy Knoxy because she used it for a handle before Kercher’s murder.
Foxy Knoxy’s father later told reporters that he was hesitant to give Amanda his blessing to travel overseas because he thought she was not mature enough, but ultimately it was her choice, as she was an adult who had lived on her own for some time.
After Kercher’s body was discovered and the death was ruled a homicide, the police followed standard procedure and interviewed Knox and Sollecito.
According to the police, red flags went up almost immediately when the two used each other for alibis and their stories seemed contrived and just too good.
Under pressure from the police and after hours of interrogation, Knox cracked and admitted to taking part in Kercher’s murder along with Sollecito and her boss, local bar owner Patrick Lumumba.
Knox’s confession was vague at best. She told the police that she had a “vision” that her boyfriend and Lumumba killed Kercher while she was in another room. In most jurisdictions in industrialized countries, such a confession would be considered suspect by prosecutors and would more than likely not be used. But this was no ordinary case; the prosecutors were under immense pressure to pursue a case against what was perceived to be a privileged American and her Italian boyfriend. The police and prosecutors argued that the confession was valid and added a number of details to present to the jury.
The prosecution contended that Kercher was murdered in a bizarre, sadistic sex game where Sollecito and Knox held the British woman down to be raped by Guede. The prosecutors then claimed that Knox stabbed and slit Kercher’s throat during the rape because she resented the Brit’s squeaky clean reputation. According to the prosecutors, Knox taunted Kercher and told her: “You acted the goody-goody so much, now we are going to show you. Now you're going to be forced to have sex!”
The statement was never corroborated by any of the others accused and later proved to be another piece in the house of cards that was the prosecution’s case.
The first card to come from the house was when the charges against Patrick Lumumba were dropped. If investigators would have done their work instead of just going on Knox’s confession, then they would have realized that Lumumba was at work the entire night of Kercher’s murder and had witnesses to corroborate his alibi.
Lumumba was released from police custody and he promptly filed a defamation lawsuit against Knox.
Knox later claimed that the confession was coerced and that she was not allowed to consult with an attorney. One of the most sensational claims that Knox made was that she was beaten by the police with rolled up reams of paper. For his part, Lumumba also claims he was beaten by the police, so there may be something to both of their claims.
Despite the lack of a definite murder weapon—one was produced by the prosecution, but it was never proven if it was in fact the one the killer used—and any solid forensic evidence linking Knox or Sollecito to the murder, both were charged with Kercher’s murder on November 6, 2009.
The resulting court proceedings took many twists and turns that at times drew more media attention than the horrendous crime itself.
The Trials
As Knox and Sollecito sat in jail preparing their defenses, the international media had a field day with the case. Foxy Knoxy was often portrayed as a Jezebel who used her feminine wiles to deceive Guede and Sollecito into committing rape and murder.
Other than the lack of physical evidence to tie either Knox or Sollecito to the murder, the prosecution was faced with the problem of motive. It was proved that Guede’s murder and rape of Kercher was incidental to the burglary of her apartment, but Knox and Sollecito seemingly had no true motive to kill the young British woman. The prosecution’s case was that the murder was part of some bizarre sex session, but the reality is there was no evidence for any of that. There was also no evidence that Knox and Sollecito even knew Guede. Despite the lack of evidence, the prosecution decided to move forward with their case. They believed that they had enough evidence to convict Knox and Sollecito.
It also did not hurt that Knox was an American.
By the time of her trial in early 2009, the international media had turned Knox into the perfect villain—a sex crazed “ugly American” who took advantage of her innocent, unsuspecting roommate for her own twisted satisfaction.
Public opinion was firmly against Knox. She probably would have been convicted of the Lindbergh kidnapping if she were alive at the time.
Knox and Sollecito were tried together and convicted of murder on December 5, 2009, which many experts contend was largely the result of the negative publicity Knox received by the international media. Knox received a twenty-six year sentence and Sollecito twenty-five years. The duo was promptly sent to separate prisons to complete their sentences.
But sometimes the wheels of justice work in a circuitous manner, especially in Italy.
Knox and Sollecito filed appeals for their convictions that ultimately led to a new trial, which began in late 2010.
The world was watching once more as Foxy Knoxy and her convicted killer paramour fought for their freedom. The appeals court ruled that what little physical evidence connected Sollecito to the crime scene—no physical evidence could be linked to Knox—was probably the result of contamination.
On October 3, 2011, both Knox and Sollecito were acquitted of Kercher’s murder and released from custody, although Knox had been convicted previously of slander on Lumumba.
Knox’s family and many people throughout the United States were joyful with the verdict, but they soon learned that the Italian justice system works quite differently than in the United States.
In the United States, if a defendant has been proven “not guilty” by either a judge or jury, he/she can never again be tried for that crime.
Things are a little different in Italy.
The Italian courts, responding to pressure by some in the public as well as the Kercher family, decided to set aside Knox’s and Sollecito’s acquittals in 2013. Both remained free on appeal and Knox had returned to the United States in 2011 and vowed never to return to Italy.
After another round of media attention, the case once more went before the courts, which resulted in complete exoneration of Knox and Sollecito on March 27, 2015. The presiding judge, Gennaro Marasca, told the court that no “biological traces that could be attributed to them in the room of the murder on the body of the victim, where in contrast numerous traces were found attributable to Guede.”
It seems as though the saga of the murder of Meredith Kercher was finally over. Or was it?
The Aftermath
Today, Knox and Sollecito are no longer a couple. Both have tried to move on with their lives, but it has not been easy. Knox, who now has a slander conviction on her record, has tried to pick up the pieces in her hometown of Seattle. She works part-time as a freelance writer and has a fiancé.
The trials were not easy on her family either.
Her parents paid for her criminal defense, which has left them insolvent and struggling financially at a point in their lives when they should be looking forward to retirement.
In the end, it looks as though Rudy Guede acted alone. Kercher apparently caught him in the act of burglarizing her home, so the convicted killer decided to rape and murder her and then made a sloppy get-away.
Although most Americans who followed the case believe this synopsis of the crime, there are still many who think Knox was somehow involved.
True Crime Stories Volume 4: 12 Shocking True Crime Murder Cases (True Crime Anthology) Page 2
